James McGee - Resurrectionist

The doctor was wearing his apron again. It seemed to have gathered a few more stains since Sawney’s previous visit. The front was black and shiny. It looked as if it had been daubed with paint. A piece of cloth was tucked in the apron’s waistband. Dodd lifted it out and began to wipe his forearms and hands, working it in between his fingers.

“You told me I was to come back,” Sawney said, “see if you wanted any more… things.” As he spoke, he bit down inadvertently on his injured tooth and let out a grunt.

Dodd’s eyes narrowed. “Are you well, Sawney? You sound as though you’re in pain.”

Sawney shook his head quickly. “It ain’t nothing. Just a bleedin’ tooth giving me gyp is all.”

Dodd stepped forward, tucking the cloth behind his apron strings. “Let me see.”

Sawney took an involuntary step back. The pain was bad enough as it was. He didn’t want some bloody quack doctor rooting around there as well. God only knew what manner of hurt would ensue. The only thing was, in his haste, he hadn’t realized one of the chairs was directly behind him. Before he knew what was happening, Sawney was sitting down and the doctor was bending over him holding the candle up to his face.

Sawney made to get up but found that Dodd was standing too close to the chair, trapping his legs. The doctor put a hand on Sawney’s shoulder and pressed him down in his seat.

“I told you,” Sawney said, trying to get up again, “it’s nothin’.” The doctor’s grip was surprisingly strong. Sawney tried to disguise a rising sense of panic.

“Open your mouth,” Dodd said softly.

The last thing on earth Sawney wanted to do at that moment was open his mouth, especially having been invited to do so in the dead of night by a man holding his upper arm in one hand, a candle in the other, and wearing a blood-smeared apron. At least, Sawney assumed it was blood. He wondered what else it could be and, more to the point, what Dodd might have been trying to remove from his hands with the cloth. The doctor’s long fingers didn’t look any cleaner than they had before he’d wiped them. His fingernails looked as though they were encrusted with shit. And the meaty smell coming off the apron wasn’t anything to write home about, either. It looked like the type of thing Maggett might wear in his slaughter yard while quartering a carcass.

Dodd moved the candle closer to Sawney’s face.

Sawney shrank back.

Dodd’s face was eight inches away from his own. “If you don’t let me look, I won’t be able to help you. I can help you, Sawney.”

Sawney realized that Dodd’s hand was stroking his shoulder. The movement was gentle, almost a caress.

“Tell me where the pain is,” Dodd said.

Instinctively, Sawney moved his tongue to the injured tooth.

Dodd nodded. “On the left? Place your head back.”

Sawney blinked. Then he realized that Dodd had traced the location by the slight bulge of his tongue against the side of his jaw.

“Open,” Dodd said. It came out more like an order than a request.

Sawney hesitated.

“I can take away your pain, Sawney. You’d like me to do that, wouldn’t you?”

Sawney stared at him, his jaw pulsing. He nodded wordlessly.

“Well, then,” Dodd said.

Against his better judgement, Sawney eased his mouth open. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

Dodd leaned forward and peered into the open maw. There was a pause. Sawney, fists clenched in anticipation of further twinges, held his breath and wondered what was taking so long. He had rarely felt so vulnerable.

Then Dodd said calmly, “You’ve lost part of a molar. The tooth will need to be extracted.”

Sawney felt the sweat spurt from the underside of his arms and down the crease of his back. He clamped his teeth shut, jarring the nerve in the process.

“But not at this moment,” Dodd said, straightening. “However, I will give you a salve for the pain.”

Turning away from the look of relief that flooded across Sawney’s face, Dodd moved to a wooden chest on the floor behind him. On it rested a black bag. Dodd rummaged in the bag and brought out a small glass phial. From another pocket inside the bag he took a thin glass pipette. He brought them to the table. Removing the phial’s stopper, he dipped the pipette into the phial and placed his finger over the opposite end to create a vacuum. His movements were unhurried. Removing his finger, he drew a small amount of the phial’s contents into the slender pipe. Resealing the end of the pipette with his fingertip, he instructed Sawney to open his mouth once more.

Apprehensively, Sawney did as he was told.

Dodd inserted the end of the pipette inside Sawney’s mouth and released the contents on to the broken tooth and the exposed nerve.

The effect was almost instantaneous. Sawney couldn’t help but let out a low moan of relief as the pain melted away. Tentatively, he lifted a hand to his jaw.

“Oil of cloves,” Dodd said. “Some say it’s as valuable as gold.” He smiled thinly. “Tell me, Private Sawney, did you ever consider, while you were removing the teeth from the bodies of your fallen comrades, that you might one day require some of them for yourself?”

Sawney froze.

Dodd placed the stopper back in the phial and put it back in the bag along with the pipette. “Ironic, wouldn’t you say?”

Sawney stared at Dodd. His tooth no longer ached, but now the back of his throat felt strange, as if he’d just swallowed several large cobwebs. Deep in his stomach, the spiders responsible for spinning the webs began to stir.

“You look surprised,” Dodd said. “What? Did you think I knew nothing about you, about your service in Spain, as a driver with the Royal Wagon Train? Very convenient for your extracurricular activities.”

Sawney regarded Dodd with awe.

Dodd said nothing. He merely returned the stare.

Suddenly, Sawney’s eyes widened. “Jesus!” he said.

“Ah,” Dodd said. “I wondered how long it might take you. Not that we ever met face to face, of course.”

Sawney’s face continued to mirror his shock.

“Normally, I’d suggest a libation to steady your nerves,” Dodd said. “But that might not be such a good idea. We wouldn’t want that tooth to flare up again.”

“You were the surgeon Butler worked for in the hospitals.”

“Well done, Sawney. Butler thought you would catch on eventually. That was one of the reasons he recommended you; because of our previous association, indirect though it was. If you cannot trust your former comrades-in-arms, who else is there? After all, that’s why you and Butler went into partnership together, was it not?”

“You ain’t in uniform now,” Sawney said.

“No. Those days are long past.”

“Don’t recall Butler mentionin’ any surgeon called Dodd neither.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Titus Hyde said.

“It ain’t your name. Why’d you change it?”

“Oh, reasons. The nature of our work, both yours and mine, dictates that we must conduct our business beyond the view of prying eyes. People are afraid of that which they do not understand. There are many who look upon our work as sorcery, branding us as heretics. They’d burn us at the stake if they could, even if they still cling to the old ways, the superstition and the spells. Butler vouched for your integrity, but I had to be certain for myself.”

Sawney said nothing.

“You can see that, can’t you?”

There was a silence. “S’pose so,” Sawney admitted grudgingly.

“I still require your assistance, Sawney.”

“Is that right?”

“A revolution is coming, Sawney; in medicine, in science, in so many things. It began with Harvey and Cheselden and John Hunter; men who weren’t afraid to turn away from the old traditions and step towards the light; brave men who were prepared to risk their reputations to explore beyond the existing boundaries of knowledge. The only thing that limits us, Sawney, is the breadth of our imagination. There’s a new way of thinking we call natural philosophy, and it’s going to change the world.”